Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Between Mr. Twingle and myself, we own an iMac, MacBook Pro, 2x iPhone4, 2x iPhone 3G, a first generation iPhone, 2x iPod Nano and AppleTV. Yes, we LOVE Apple.

Apple has an awesome reputation, not just for their products; but, for their customer service too.

And that is why I am so unbelievably frustrated by the events of this past week. As I mentioned briefly on my Facebook page, my iMac "blew up" the Friday of the Labour Day weekend. I was working on a blog post, when the computer randomly shut down. This was an annoying, yet not new occurrence, so I didn't think anything of it. I let it sit and then tried to turn it back on as I have many times before. But unlike previous times, there was a very loud fan noise, followed by a "pop" and cloud of dark grey smoke out of the vent. YIKES!
I immediately unplugged the computer and and booked an appointment from my iPhone for the Genius Bar at the new Apple Store in Mapleview Centre, Burlington.

Mr. Twingle and I took the computer in on Sunday for our scheduled appointment. We explained the situation to our Genius and waited to see what he thought. He wanted to run a diagnostic so he turned on the computer and to everyone's surprise, it started without problem! The Genius ran a short diagnostic which reported that everything was perfect. However, given the fact that the machine had "blown up" at me, he wanted to keep it to run a more in-depth diagnostic. He checked in the machine with a timeline of completing it later that day, or Tuesday (Monday was the holiday) at the latest. Mr. Twingle and I happily left believing we would know more by Tuesday and hoped it wouldn't be anything too serious.

When I didn't hear anything by end of day on Sunday, I figured they were busy with the long-weekend and only having opened the previous day and would give them till Tuesday, no problem.

Tuesday evening rolls around and I still haven't heard anything from the Apple Store, so I call looking for an update. Since the Geniuses are busy at the Genius Bar, a receptionist takes my information and lets me know that a Genius will get back to me...or NOT.
Wednesday afternoon...still no call, so I call again and I'm again told that someone will get back to me today with the information.
By Thursday, I'm PISSED. We were supposed to know what was happening by Tuesday at the latest and after two calls and two promises someone would get back to me I still hadn't heard anything. So I call again and this time I tell them this is my THIRD follow up and I would like an answer. I'm put on hold for an indeterminable amount of time before the receptionist comes back on the line to say "they haven't even looked at it, and it would be another 24-48 hours".

WTF?!?

Friday...I still haven't heard anything and out of concern that perhaps I'm getting the runaround because I'm a woman, I had Mr. Twingle call the store. Unfortunately, he didn't get much further than I had. The weekend comes and goes and my "same-day service" has become a week so Mr. Twingle and I go to the store in-person, Monday morning.

We spoke to Brandon, one of the managers and had him look into things. There seems to be conflicting stories, not just on the phone; but, in person too. One person, before meeting Brandon, had told us that there were two computers in for repair under the same last name so the techs were confused. Brandon then told us that on Sunday when we brought our machine in, there systems were down. So when they entered the information when they came back up, ours was put into the wrong queue and no one knew why our machine was still sitting there until we started calling, repeatedly.
Apparently, once they started working on our computer, they could not duplicate the problem. The computer turned on as it should, everything ran properly. When they took it apart, they couldn't find any instance of components blowing and there conclusion was that my computer blew because we own a cat. Yep, my iMac had a hairball. I kid you not...that was their explanation for what happened. According to Brandon, their recommended course of action was to wipe the computer's hard-drive and reinstall the OS; oh, and he was going to install the updated Lion for free for all our trouble.

Not exactly what Mr. Twingle and I wanted to hear. A computer doesn't go poof because of some cat hair; but, okay whatever. Our Genius wasn't in at that particular junction, so Brandon recommended talking to him directly that afternoon when his shift started. We were told the Genius would call us around 1:30pm since he started at 1:00. Can you guess what happened? We didn't get a call. Mr. Twingle called at 3:00 and spoke to our Genius who confirmed everything Brandon had relayed. He offered to do the back up and install more RAM as well; but, I had to bring an external drive and RAM to them since they don't sell RAM and don't typically back-up machines for people.
I trekked all three kids out to buy RAM and drop it off, along with the external drive for the back-up on Monday evening around 6:30. I left figuring they couldn't do it while I waited, so it would be ready sometime Tuesday.

Tuesday morning, yesterday, I called around 10am just to see where things stood. I was told that they had completed the service and were just transferring the data back onto the machine and it would be ready that evening. GREAT! I relayed the information to Mr. Twingle and asked him to stop by to pick it up on his way home from work.
At 3:00, just before Mr. Twingle was scheduled to leave work, I called the Apple store again, just to be certain that it was ready and I was told that everything was done and we could pick up the machine at any time. WAHOO!

OR NOT

Apparently at 2:00, while Mr. Twingle was in a meeting and couldn't answer his phone, the Genius called him to tell him that the RAM was the wrong speed and the computer was rejecting it, so they couldn't finish. Mr. Twingle, calls to see what's going on since we're being given two different answers and confirms that they haven't fixed the computer because the RAM is the wrong speed.

We are LIVID and tired of the bullshit. Mr. Twingle picks up the computer on his way home anyway since the Geniuses' can't seem to get it fixed.

After 20 minutes on YouTube, Mr. Twingle was able to take the computer apart, verify that there wasn't anything blown, clean out the computer, reassemble it and install the RAM; which was the right speed and works just fine, thank you very much. Proving that my husband is smarter than a Genius.

I've never been so disappointed by a service in all my life. Not only could the "Geniuses" not locate or fix the problem, their customer service SUCKS. I would strongly advise against taking your machines to the Genius Bar at Mapleview Centre anytime soon.